


Craquelure

by LittleLostStar



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Beautiful art, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Magical Realism, Victor is a haunted painting, and so thirsty, who knew a painting could be that thirsty?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 13:57:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17489303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLostStar/pseuds/LittleLostStar
Summary: In January of 1853, a portrait of Victor Nikiforov is locked in an attic, abandoned and forgotten. For over a century, Victor sits there; his paint crumbles and fades, and the world moves on around him—until he’s found by an art restorer named Yuuri Katsuki, whose loving touch brings the portrait of Victor back to life in more ways than one.





	Craquelure

**Author's Note:**

> I was so overwhelmed and honoured to be part of the [Born to Make (Art) History Zine](https://borntomakearthistoryzine.tumblr.com/); it was the very first zine I ever got into! I was even more overjoyed to work with Bracari, who did such beautiful illustrations. It is a pleasure to finally be able to share this work with all of you; I hope you like it!

In January of 1853, an art thief in the slums of Saint Petersburg comes into possession of a portrait of Victor Nikiforov, the only son of Count Pyotr Nikiforov. With arresting blue eyes and striking silvery hair, Victor was one of the most popular members of Saint Petersburg’s elite, up until his recent and untimely death; his portrait captures him in his prime, wearing a beautiful double-breasted pink coat trimmed with gold. He stares directly at the viewer with the barest hint of a smile, reminiscent of the flirtatious way he courted the men and women around him.

Upon discovering that the portrait is gone, Count Pyotr flies into a murderous rage. The art thief grabs the gold gilt frame and tosses the painting itself into his attic; in his haste to flee the city, he takes the only key with him, forcing the new owner to board up the entrance to prevent his tenants from becoming too curious. The door never opens again.

The portrait of Victor Nikiforov sits alone, at the mercy of the elements, abandoned and forgotten. Days pass. Weeks pass. A month.

The moisture and temperature begin to take their toll on him. The paint of his left eye bubbles, pops, and peels. The entire left side of his face darkens with moisture, threatening to sag. The starch in the canvas swells, dries, and shrinks back, warping the paint around it. The far right side of the painting fares only a little better, exposed to a piercing shaft of sunlight from a west-facing window. In the summer, the heat of it bakes the varnish until it cracks, flaking off with every gust of wind, exposing raw pigment and fraying canvas.

Throughout all of this, Victor looks at the patch of bare wall in front of him. He studies every dent, every crack, every uneven piece of plaster. He learns how to tell the time of day, the month of the year, and the weather outside by the shifting hues and shadows of the paint. He watches mould swell and expand, a black-green empire of consumption and conversion, until a particularly dry summer bakes it all to powder. The empire crumbles to dust; the world moves on.

Years pass. Decades pass. A century.

Victor has no eyes to move and no head to turn, so he looks at the same patch of wall. He hears things outside: the bustle of normalcy transforms into the shouts of revolution, which transforms into gunfire and screaming which transforms into a haunting, too-long silence—a long winter of nothing that eventually gives way to the slow bud and bloom of everyday life. The _clop_ of horse’s hooves on the street transforms into a very different sound altogether—a mechanical growl that doubles and then triples and then takes over completely, drowning out everything else.

The portrait of Victor Nikiforov stays still as the world moves on around him, and he sees nothing of it. He sees nothing but the wall, for dozens of years—until the day that he sees something different.

It’s a man.

Dust shudders and lifts in clouds as the attic door thunks once, twice, and finally lurches open. The man stumbles in, coughing as he catches a faceful of grime, sidestepping the areas where the floorboards have rotted away. Victor traces his movement whenever the man passes across his field of vision; he seems to be looking for something, wandering to and fro among the junk, pausing every so often—until he looks up and sees Victor, and his jaw drops. He creeps closer, and finally comes into full view.

The portrait of Victor Nikiforov cannot breathe. If it could, he wouldn’t be able to prevent the sharp hitch of air as his chest tightened, encasing his heart, whispering: _it’s too early to break over this, no matter how beautiful he is._

And he is beautiful indeed, skin smooth and eyes achingly expressive. His brown eyes are framed by blue-rimmed glasses, his dark black hair dulled by a sprinkling of dust. There’s a smudge of dirt on his forehead; it fills in the lines of his skin when he furrows his brow, leaving a ghost of his puzzled expression behind. The man’s fingers flit over the rough surface of the painting, just barely making contact with the peaks and valleys carved by the painter’s brush.

“Hello, beautiful,” he murmurs, as his thumb brushes just over Victor’s cheek. “I’m Yuuri. I’m going to take care of you.”

 _Hello, Yuuri,_ the portrait of Victor cannot say. _It is truly, incredibly, overwhelmingly marvelous to meet you._

He has no blood to flow, and no veins through which it could rush. And yet he swears he can feel his heart beating, a steady thud somewhere in the vicinity of his chest.

Then Yuuri lifts him up and carries him out of that place, and Victor loses the thudding feeling in the rocking of footsteps and the rumble of engines.

~

When Victor is next unveiled, it’s in a brightly lit room made of metal and concrete, with every surface covered in clutter: paint, brushes, ink-splattered cloths, papers, and bulky machines whose purpose Victor couldn’t even begin to guess. Other paintings are scattered throughout the room, leaning against the wall and each other like sighing sages. Each one is undeniably damaged in some way; cracked, split, broken, discoloured.

And there is Yuuri, standing in front of him. He sighs and rubs his hand across the back of his neck as a faint blush creeps across his face.

“So, here’s the deal,” he says, right _to_ Victor, as if he was a person too. “You are my first ever solo restoration project. I’m on my own; I...left my apprenticeship last year.” At this, Yuuri smiles bitterly. “Not to put any pressure on you, but last year I found a Feltsman painting and took it to the National Gallery and basically got laughed out of the place. It was a fake. He’s my favourite painter, and I fell for a forgery.”

Yuuri’s face falls, but Victor perks up, inasmuch as he can, at the mention of the gruff man who painted him. He has fond memories of sitting for the portrait, teasing Yakov to see if he could make the old master smile. The fact that history has not forgotten Yakov Feltsman, and has in fact elevated him to the point of imitation, provides Victor with a small sense of resolution—a single piece of closure for a life and death filled with creaking open doors.

Yuuri sighs, snapping Victor’s attention back to the present. “The thing is, I don’t think anyone realizes you exist, and if you’re an actual Yakov Feltsman original...” he trails off, biting his lip, but shakes his head, rejecting his thoughts, and huffs. “I don’t care. I have a feeling you’re the real thing. You’re too gorg—there are things—look, I’m just gonna get all of this gunk off you and see what I can see, and then touch up what I can. I...hope that’s okay?” he snickers, the blush intensifying, clearly embarrassed to be talking to an inanimate object, and Victor aches to say _yes_.

Yuuri clears his throat. “Anyway. I promise I’ll try my best not to screw it up.”

 _I have absolute confidence in your abilities_ , Victor imagines replying. _Beauty can recognize beauty. And you are so beautiful, Yuuri._

Yuuri looks right into Victor’s eyes, squinting slightly, head tilted, as if trying to see something beyond the layers of paint. He reaches up to brush his hand across Victor’s brow, feather-light.

“How could anyone have ever tossed you away?” he murmurs.

The portrait of Victor Nikiforov cannot answer, even if he could.

 

  

The restoration process begins properly the next day, when Yuuri goes over the portrait with a magnifying lens, sweeping across the canvas in achingly slow motion, pausing every so often to scribble a note or mumble something to himself. Victor feels somewhat exposed at this scrutiny, all too aware of the ravages of time and improper storage conditions, but such embarrassment only lasts for about an hour; it’s simply too enchanting to watch Yuuri look at him, to see the pores of his skin and the length of his eyelashes, magnified by the lens to comical size. Next, Yuuri runs him through a contraption that flashes bright and disorienting, with an overloaded white light that pulls at the edges of his perception. Later Yuuri sits at his desk, looking at something on the machine Victor has recently learned to call a _computer_ ; from his vantage point, Victor can just barely see the images over Yuuri’s shoulder, stark black and white negative echoes of his face. Yuuri pores over the too-wide span of his forehead, and Victor cringes; he told Yakov to redo his hairline when the painting was first commissioned, and now that correction stands out in embarrassing bright white.

Almost on cue, Yuuri chuckles. “Oh dear,” he mutters, absently scribbling a note, eyes still trained on the computer. “I can see why this got painted over.” He looks over his shoulder at Victor, a flash of mischief in his eyes, and winks. “Why don’t we keep that our little secret? I like you much better with the bangs.”

 _Me too,_ Victor cannot reply. He watches Yuuri turn back to the computer and flip through more images, until he stops at one and rocks back in his chair, dropping his pencil.

“Oh…” he murmurs, so softly it’s almost inaudible.

Victor only has a second to recognize the bright circles of his coat buttons before Yuuri’s back blocks the screen as he leans in close, hand scrubbing across his mouth. He stays that way for a very long time, looking, his shoulders rising and falling with each breath. Victor waits; it’s the thing he does best. After a while, Yuuri turns off the computer and sits back in his chair.

 _What is it?_ Victor thinks, begging his lips to move, always in vain. _What did you find?_

~

The next morning Yuuri mixes up several chemicals, applying and removing them in various points to the very edges of the canvas, studying each test spot intently and taking photographs every so often. Eventually he seems satisfied, and after tinkering at a far counter he returns with a large container of clear gel, a paintbrush, and a box of white cotton puffs. Yuuri reaches up to and applies the gel in a thick layer across Victor’s face, working in small controlled motions, his touch impossibly gentle. Then Yuuri takes a cotton pad and wipes the gel off, pulling away to reveal a hideous amount of yellow-brown pigment on the surface of the pad. For one horrifying moment, Victor thinks he’s being erased from existence, but then Yuuri looks at the pad and grins.

“This is what a few decades of bad varnish and weather will accumulate.” He looks back up at Victor and exhales through pursed lips, a blush creeping at the tops of his cheeks. “I—wow. You are...stunning. Your eyes…”

Victor imagines lifting his hand, extending it to cup Yuuri’s cheek. He imagines tilting his head to the side and capturing Yuuri’s lips with his own, for just a moment. A heartbeat. A single kiss.

He has no hands, no head, no lips, no heart.

Yuuri has stepped back, to study the painting in full. “I think it’ll take a few coats of solvent to get this varnish off of you,” he says, running his hand through his hair absently and leaving splendidly chaotic flyaways in his wake. “During my apprenticeship I usually only got to do a little bit of the cleaning, but I don’t really have anything else to work on now. I’ve only got you, Victor.”

Victor can’t close his eyes at the sound of his name—the first time he’s heard it in over a hundred years. _Please keep calling me that_ , he wishes he could reply.

“I, uh, I looked you up. Victor Nikiforov, right?”

He doesn’t have the pronunciation quite right—there’s a little too much emphasis on the _for-,_ which results in a stumbling over the final syllable—but Victor wouldn’t correct him even if he could, so instead he imagines that his placid painted-on smile could grow to reflect his joy.

“Russian nobleman, died young,” Yuuri recites. “I can only date the painting to a rough estimate right now but I’m guessing you weren’t much older than you look now. Which—that’s a shame. I’m sorry.”

 _I’m sorry too_ , Victor thinks.

He knows the truth: he never saw the finished portrait he now haunts. He sat for the first few sessions, saw the mostly finished areas of his face (whereupon he haggled over the aforementioned issue of his hairline), and arrogantly went off chasing some distraction or another. The last thing Victor the man remembered was walking down the hallway of his father’s estate; all was black for a short while, and then he was here, trapped in canvas and oil, with memories of a life that seemed only half-real, like a story told over and over again until the sharp truths faded away.

Yuuri’s eyes are still scanning Victor’s face, flitting back and forth in tiny motions, trying to take everything in. “The sources I could find all said you died very suddenly. Your heart just stopped.”

Victor feels it again, that _thud_ in the vicinity of his chest, or maybe he just imagines it. And Yuuri stares back, lips parted, on the verge of saying something. Eventually he sets the gel on the ground and comes closer, fingers hovering just above the newly cleaned surface of Victor’s face.

“I wonder what you were like,” he says. “I always wonder about the people in paintings. But you…” his fingers twitch, as if to brush Victor’s bangs away from his face. “You’re different. Maybe just because you’re mine.”

 _Yes,_ Victor imagines sighing, holding Yuuri’s face in his hands, foreheads pressed together, their lips barely grazing. _I’m yours_.

Yuuri swallows. “...at least, you are for now.”

Victor has no hands, no fingers, nothing with which to grasp for the shards of the fantasy as it shatters around him, so he lets it go, and says nothing.

~

After cleaning, Yuuri explains (he’s talking to himself, but Victor enjoys the illusion of conversation), it’s time for the canvas to be reinforced. For a terrifying few days Victor is turned around so that he faces a wall again, but Yuuri does not leave him. Instead he works, talking all the while, applying a special adhesive to the back of the canvas and sealing it to a new, fresh liner, infusing the adhesive through the bottom layers of primer and pigment using a heat gun. Then there are two whole days where Yuuri does nothing but study the paint of Victor’s face, mixing pigments of his own. It’s long past sunset on the second day when Yuuri finally pulls a tall stool and a rolling cart full of brushes and paint over to Victor.

“Excuse my intrusion,” Yuuri quips, rolling a small brush into a dish of skin-coloured pigment, “but I hope you won’t mind?”

 _Not at all_ , Victor doesn’t reply, as Yuuri leans in, exhales a steady breath, and places the brush on the canvas.

It’s a curious thing, to be painted again. Victor cannot feel anything, not even the pressure of brush on canvas or the coolness of the paint, but he’s _aware_ of Yuuri’s presence, so close that it would give him goosebumps if he had skin. He wishes he could see the results.

The repainting takes a long time, but Victor doesn’t mind; time is all he has, and the days he spends with Yuuri are cherished treasures. The studio has no windows, but Victor can mark the days and weeks and months by watching Yuuri—which shirt he’s wearing, the way the rain plasters his hair to his face, how the cold turns his nose and cheeks a different shade of red than the charming blush that appears when he’s flustered. For a while Yuuri has to stamp snow out of his boots when he arrives at the studio, and soon afterwards he begins a collection of umbrellas that he brings in each morning and inevitably forgets by the time he drags himself away each night. In between, Yuuri sits in front of Victor, and he paints, and he talks. He tells Victor about growing up in Japan, about his dog Vicchan, about going to art school. He talks about the moment he realized he was in love with a male classmate, and when he turns away to compose himself Victor aches to reach out and hold him. One day, while restoring the paint around Victor’s left hand, Yuuri confesses how frightened he is that no one will ever take him seriously as a conservator; Victor scoffs at the very idea.

 _I am proof that that isn’t true_. He imagines projecting the thought directly into Yuuri’s mind.

Yuuri is meticulous, focusing on minute details in the shine of Victor’s coat buttons and the shadow of his sleeves. Victor listens to Yuuri talk, relishes in his ministrations, and wonders if his silent replies can be felt in the stretch of the canvas or the hue of the paint.

And then one night Yuuri drops his brush with a definitive _click_ , steps back from the painting, and looks at Victor for a very long time. He holds his palm over the center of Victor’s chest, just above the silver buttons of his coat.

 _Hello,_ Victor thinks flirtatiously. _What’s a gorgeous man like you doing in a place like this?_

No sooner has he finished the thought than Yuuri turns on his heel and leaves the studio; he doesn’t even pause to put on his coat, and then Victor is alone.

He tries to count the minutes, panic rising in him for the first time. He loses track twice, forced to start over, so he has no idea how long has truly passed, but he knows that when the door _clangs_ open again, he feels relief flooding through him like a powerful waterfall.

Yuuri comes back holding a half-full bottle of vodka; he sits down in front of the painting, drinking directly from the bottle. He is silent for a very long time, and then:

“Can I tell you a secret?” he asks, putting a finger to his lips. “It’s—shh, listen. Listen.”

Victor has done nothing but look and listen for a very long time, but he imagines settling in beside Yuuri, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, and taking a light swig of vodka, the bottle warm from Yuuri’s lips. _I’m listening._

“I’ve been dreaming about you,” Yuuri says, and Victor wishes he had breath to hold. “In my dreams you come down from the painting and we—we dance.”

The portrait of Victor Nikiforov imagines closing his eyes, leaning into the fantasy where he can take Yuuri’s hands in his own and sweep him off his feet. Instead he just keeps looking at Yuuri, who has spread his arms wide.

“Your unveiling will be so amazing,” he proclaims proudly. “Everyone’s going to come see you. No one will ever forget you again. You…” he trails off, suddenly contemplative, and he clambers to his feet, reaching out to rest his hand on the edge of the frame, meticulously avoiding touching the paint.

“You’ll be so beloved,” Yuuri whispers, voice thick with emotion. “I want that for you. I want everyone else to love you as much as I do.”

 _Impossible,_ Victor pretends to reply. _No one else can love like you do, Yuuri._

~

The next morning, without much ceremony, two men come by and take Victor away. They carry him past Yuuri, whose carefully held smile collapses into undeniable grief as soon as the men aren’t looking—but Victor is, and Victor sees, and he wants nothing more than to leap from the painting and run back to Yuuri’s arms. But he’s helpless, and he can’t do much more than imagine calling out Yuuri’s name, over and over, a desperate prayer that he continues as he’s unloaded into a new building, placed into a new frame, and mounted on a new wall, watched by a multitude of brand new people. All the while the only thing he can think is _Yuuri_ , the two syllables thudding together in his chest.

Victor’s unveiling should be a proud moment, but as soon as the dropcloth covering him is pulled away he scans the room frantically until he sees—Yuuri.

Victor cannot call to him. He can only wish, pray, echo the words around inside his mind: _please turn around. Please tell me you’re all right. Please take me back with you. I miss you._

And Yuuri does walk over, but at the last moment he turns to face the assembled crowd. An older man claps Yuuri on the shoulder and gives a speech commending him for his restoration work, and Victor sees a blush creep up the nape of Yuuri’s neck, his fingers twisting nervously behind his back. Victor imagines reaching out and taking Yuuri’s hand, saying: _look at all these people. Look at how proud they are of you. They love you._

He can’t do any of that, so he watches as Yuuri begins to speak, explaining the way he found Victor, the restoration process, and how thankful he is. He never turns around, and soon—too soon—his speech is over and the audience surges forward to take a look. Dozens of eyes turn towards Victor, and Yuuri gets lost in the crowd.

 _He’ll come back later,_ Victor reasons. _After the party has wound down._

And so he waits.

~

Days pass. Months pass. Years.

Victor looks at every person who comes to look at him; he is studied and studious in equal measure. Some people he recognizes when they come back week after week; others will reappear sporadically, looking almost guilty—as if Victor were a priest, overlooking the errant members of his flock. Some visitors bring children fussing with boredom and barely-held restraint; with every visit they are calmer, look for longer, and understand more, until they are grown up and bring children of their own. School groups, gawking tourists, impassive teenagers, fascinated students—Victor sees them all, over and over again, a growing and shrinking empire of bodies moving until they blur together.

None of them are ever Yuuri.

He hears flashes of conversation every so often about Yuuri Katsuki, the famed art restoration expert, who can bring any painting back to life. Yuuri, his Yuuri, is first a professor at Cambridge, and then the Dean at the Royal College of Art. He’s traveling to Greece, then to China, then to nations Victor has never heard of.

Decades go by in a flash. Victor is transferred to Russia, France, Britain, Canada, and then back again; he watches citizens of one nation become tourists in another, watches art lovers on first dates who stand, nervous, studying the reaction of their companions more than the paintings around them. He watches students bring the same cream-coloured paper and tray of soft pencils to sketch him over and over, their brows knitted together in concentration, their hands lifting from the paper with a flourish when they’re done.

The portrait of Victor Nikiforov stays still as the world moves on around him, and he sees everything pass by in fast motion, until the night he sees something different.

It’s him.

He walks softly, almost floating, feet barely touching the ground. His skin is creamy and smooth, eyes glittering behind blue-rimmed glasses that Victor hasn’t seen in decades. There’s a smudge of paint on his forehead, and he seems to be faintly glowing.

Victor has lost count of the number of times he’s wished he could climb out of his canvas, hop down from the edge of the frame, and simply walk towards the thing he wants most.

This time, he does.

His feet touch the floor and he feels a jolt through his body—suddenly he _has_ a body, made of skin and bone, not a trace of oil or varnish in sight. He gasps gently, a sharp hitch of air, as his heart beats against his ribs, desperate to break.

There’s only one thing he can say: “Yuuri?”

“Hello Victor,” Yuuri says. “It’s very good to see you again.”

Victor’s takes a step forward, and then another, until he’s close enough to reach out and touch Yuuri’s arm. His skin is exactly as smooth as Victor always imagined.

“I’ve missed you,” he whispers, voice coming out in a croak, suddenly unsure of what to do. Yuuri steps even closer.

“I’ve missed you too,” he replies. He brushes Victor’s bangs aside, fingertips feather-light.

“How—it’s been seventy years. How are you here, like this?” As soon as he asks the question, Victor knows he’s going to dread the answer, and sure enough Yuuri’s smile flattens and looks down, taking Victor’s hand.

“I think you know,” he replies in a near-whisper. He traces the heart line of Victor’s palm.  

Victor looks away, trying and failing to blink away his tears. He finally has a voice, but he doesn’t know what to say.

“Will you dance with me?”

Victor’s eyes fly open, startled by the request. “N-now?”

Yuuri laughs, a peal of bells. “Yes, now,” he says, shifting his hand to interlace their fingers together, drawing in close to put his other hand on Victor’s shoulder. It’s been two centuries since he last danced with anyone, but Victor doesn’t hesitate; he curves his hand around Yuuri’s waist and begins a simple waltz, and as they step in time and rhythm he swears he can even hear music—a ghostly echo of strings and piano. From the way Yuuri smiles, it seems he can hear it too.

“I wanted to come back and see you one last time,” he says. “I’m sorry I’m so late.”

Victor can’t help but smile. “From what I heard, it seems like you had a very busy career.”

Yuuri nods. “Yes. And I owe it all to you, my Victor,” he grins as Victor twirls him around. “Sometimes I wish I’d kept you to myself. Nothing was ever the same again after I let you go. And I...I wish I’d known you. As a person, I mean. Not a painting.”

Victor hums. “I’m afraid I wasn’t as grand as Yakov made me seem. I chased after an awful lot of young men, I drank entirely too much wine, and refused to attend to my family duties.”

“Exactly my type,” Yuuri teases, and Victor laughs—and it’s marvelous, to be able to express the joy surging through him, just like that.

They dance for a little while longer in silence; Yuuri closes his eyes, surrendering to Victor’s lead, and the smile on his face is beatific, calm, peaceful— _home_ , Victor thinks, and before he realizes what he’s doing he stops waltzing, cups Yuuri’s face in both his hands, and softly, chastely, _finally_ kisses him.

He’d forgotten the feeling of lightning bolts surging through his limbs, the heightened sensation of touch, the soft gasp of air when they part. Victor can barely stand to let go, so he remains with his forehead pressed against Yuuri’s, trying to calm the heartbeat pounding in his chest.

“I want to tell you something,” Yuuri says, his lips so close that they brush against Victor’s.

“Yes,” Victor replies, because he _can_.

Yuuri’s hand moves lower, down Victor’s neck and across his collarbone, coming to a stop at the center of his chest.

“When I first began to restore you, I x-rayed you,” he says, and Victor has a flash of memory—the machine with the too-bright light.

_Oh._

“And I found—well, painters sometimes do other work that they paint over, to reuse canvases or correct mistakes. And there weren’t that many mistakes or coverups; Yakov was famous for that. But here—” Yuuri’s fingers curl slightly into the fabric of Victor’s shirt “—he painted a heart. A perfect anatomical illustration. And then he painted over it.”

Victor stops. His heart doesn’t.

Yuuri swallows. “I—I don’t know if it was in tribute, because of how you died. I don’t think he told anyone about it; I couldn’t find any other painting of his that ever contained anything else like it. But I saw it, Victor. I wanted you to know that.”

Victor is frozen to the spot, his heart pounding in his chest, unable to move as Yuuri brushes his thumb across his face, pulling away a tear.

“Careful,” Yuuri says with a wink, “you’ll smudge.”

At this Victor breaks, gasping with laughter and tears in equal measure, wrapping his arms around Yuuri’s neck, pulling him closer.

“Please don’t leave me again,” he whispers, before he can stop himself. “I can’t bear it.”

Yuuri grins now, the same grin of promise and potential and joy that Victor fell in love with all those years ago in an attic in Saint Petersburg.

“So come with me,” he says softly.

And Victor kisses him again, a promise of more on his lips, and thinks _yes,_ because he doesn’t have to say it.

~

“I heard,” says one museumgoer, much later, standing at the patch of wall where Victor once was, “that when Yuuri Katsuki died, his first restoration decayed overnight with no explanation. It was his spirit, taking the painting with him.”

“That’s ridiculous,” his companion scoffs. “Someone broke in and destroyed it on purpose. There was also a square missing out of the middle of the painting; a ghost can’t do that.”

The museum docent smiles to herself; she’s overheard hundreds of variations of this conversation, and told several herself. She looks up at the wall, which has remained bare ever since, and squints her eyes.

It’s a trick of the light, but if she looks at just the right angle, sometimes she can see the faintest outline of a heart.

  

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Tumblr](https://iwritevictuuri.tumblr.com)! Come say hi!


End file.
